Dune (1984) - Page 2

I agree that it would be a great choice ! The extended version is just plain horrible, I like Dune (well at least enjoy it) and the extended version makes me sick.

You should see Clash of the Titans ... this isn't a jab at the FX (which were quaint back in 1981) but the horrible, horrible matte work. Worst I've seen since the old Dark Shadows TV series, which was filmed live and had an excuse for looking bad.

Funny, I was going to say the Dune matte work made Dynamation look like CGI.

So is the complaints about matte work the old school version of complaining about CGI shots ?

No, because nobody complained about the very existence of matte shots like they do with CGI.

I loved Dune when I was a kid. I was really into it, even though in retrospect I had no idea what the fuck was happening in it. But my uncle was a big Herbert fan, and he took me when I was 5. I loved it so much he kept taking me back and buying me the toys, which I wish I still had.

Ahh, true. I am just tired of people bashing CGI, and showing love to any non CGI special effects, regardless of the quality. This was the first time I came across matte shot bashing (and there is some lack luster matte use in Dune), and just wondered if it was the precursor. But I see the difference now.

Honestly, special effects have never been big selling point for me. I tolerate 1,000+ episodes of Dark Shadows and never once complained ... but the matte work in Clash of the Titans is offensive. I can't believe they let it go to screens like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnk3J5xAlsY

Watch for the vanishing seagull, which changes from a real bird to a transparent matte cutout, and then vanishes altogether.

Seriously, the shows without the seagull sell the idea better than the "seagull shadow." It would have been a better choice to have omitted those frames completely.

Didn't mean to hijack the thread for Clash of the Titans/Dark Shadows comments.

Back on topic: I came to think of Jurgen Prochnow as the kiss of death for movies for more than a decade. He's a fine actor, but must be jinxed or something: Dune, Judge Dredd, Beverly Hills Cop 2, The Seventh Sign, The Keep, etc. I can't think of a decent movie he's been in since Das Boot.

Oh hell yeah. Rewatched this over the weekend, and I'll be damned if the scene where the Baron pulled the plug on that kid and then basically molested him as he died isn't among the most disturbing shit Lynch has put on film.

I just love that Lynch cast Kenneth McMillan, this character actor who seemed to specialise in blue-collar roles, as the most evil, degenerate fucker in the universe, and that McMillan just let his freak flag fly. Only slightly more nasty than Harkonnen messing up that slave boy was his dribbling spittle onto the face of Paul's mother.

This is such a magnificent, unwieldy beast of a movie, and I can't help but dig it. And with its ridiculously ornate sets, doggedly sincere performances (with just the slightest hint of tongues lodged in cheeks) and awesome prog-rock soundtrack, it's a top companion piece to FLASH GORDON. Grazie, Dino! Molto bene!

My Guilty Pleasure. Dig a lot this movie. Better than Star Wars....

I loved the use of graphics and narration in the film’s first quarter. That was a very original technique at the time, and is still quite interesting.

I unashamedly LOVE this flick. Sure, it's not a perfect adaptation of the book but Lynch is by no means a slouch as a screenwriter/director. The production design is impeccable & it's one of the few films that actually looks as if it were filmed on an alien world, far in the future. The story may also appear unwieldy but Lynch keeps a tight rein on the narrative focus & character economy. As for whatever faults the film may have, IMO, they primarily lay with it's rushed theatrical release editing & dated FX. Both of which could be dealt with for a (never-gonna-happen) briefcase blu.

I also remember Dune's intrinsic weirdness coming off especially bad in 1984 as it was the first BIG sci-tentpole post-ROTJ (there were spice worm coloring books, ferchrissakes!).

Dune is not the greatest movie I have ever seen, but I think it's a pretty good movie.

I also can't recall another movie that was set so far into the future. Wish other sf films would take a stab at completely divorcing themselves from any significant vestige of the present day and take some stabs at long-term speculative fiction.

That's one of the my favorite things about the book, the sense that our modern era is forgotten and ancient, and this world 10,000 years later, alien in its concerns and divorced from computers, does not even remember us. The last line of the book, "History will remember us as wives" is so great because an underlying subtext is that history won't remember them as anything.

I enjoy the movie more in discussions like this than in actually watching it, though in bits it's a lot of fun. It's worth it all just for giving us Brad Dourif's mantra. And both the book and the movie are tantalizing, because in them are really cinematic and interesting elements (the intricate plotting and doubletalk of the first half of the book, Lynch's mood and atmosphere unsaddled with 80's blockbuster concerns) that have never reached their full potential onscreen.

In the Frank Herbert novels proper, the series is set some 26,000 years or so into the future -- the "10,191" dating (which the Lynch film incorrectly uses) is really 10,191 years after the founding of the Spacing Guild, which itself falls around 16,000 years from our own time period.

The excellent, but now unfortunately-out-of-print Dune Encyclopedia has much more on this, including an entire chronology.

(And it's probably best to simply ignore the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson abortions entirely, methinketh.)

I've always been fascinated with this movie. When I was young, Lady Jessica had so much fucking grace...And the aspects of the mythology of the world were just mindblowing. I agree that things seemed to be really rushed in the latter half after Paul and Jessica escape to the Fremen...but then pick up again when the Emperor comes to Arakkis.
There's something so ....gritty and lived in. And I liked Sting's casting. It was weird as hell...then again, all the Harkonnens were weird as hell.
The Fremen stillsuit is on my list of costumes I want to make. There.....there's just a sense of iconicity about so many of the elements of Dune that neither of the tv series matched.
And while it's a debatable topic, I rather enjoyed the whispered narration of thoughts/voiceovers by the characters. It gave the film a much more cerebral? interior feel: Y'know, you could literally see (hear) the gears turning in their heads.

I think I'm going to watch this later tonight. Thanks!

Getting some Sci Fi schooling here.
I had always thought that Dune had absolutely no relation to Earth or the Future. Just assumed it was a distant galaxy and in that galaxy the recorded year was 10,191.

I have to say that despite (possibly because of) its flaws, I really enjoy Dune - I would recommend checking out Gigers work for one of the versions of Dune (I believe it is in his book Biomechanics or Necromonicon I)

Don't know if this had been posted in a thread here in chud...

 

 

Sean Young's youtube channel has her 1983 super 8 film!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFTS5-cIHgQ

 

 

This movie is very beautific and the sand worms were done very well.  Everything else is dogshit.  The acting that seems to be lifted from a community theater troupe's rendition of Shakespeare, the terrible line delivery, the Lynchisms (every single thing involving Baron Harkonnen, he was already a caricature of a bad guy in the book, Lynch made him into a cartoon character), the way characters step into frame and then vomit 20 chapters worth of exposition when there are better ways of doing it, and ye gods the narration.  "My... hand... burning.... the... pain..." says Paul's inner monlogue as we watch his hand burn.  Lynch's version represents everything that people do wrong when trying to adapt Dune.  It's not unfilmable, nor is it that complicated a story to adapt other than because it's not a traditional 3-act story.  There's nothing complicated about Dune and there are ways of explaining the backstory without bashing the viewer over the head with it like this one did.  I'm not even a Lynch hater, but he just wasn't qualified to do this story and almost every aspect of the movie shows it.

Anybody got these?

 

Screw that, I want those DUNE bedsheets!

 

Upon re-reading this thread, I've decided I need to give the film another look. Haven't seen it in over 10 years.

I honestly don't know why this film isn't a laugh along midnight movie like Plan 9 or The Room.  The pedigree of the people involved? Sting was fairly cranky back in the day?  I just don't know.

After all those years of hearing about how bad it was and how it was the skunk in Lynch's portfolio, when I finally caught up with it I had a ball with it. Is it his best film? No. Is it a good sci-fi epic? No. Is it a fascinating example of what happens when you give a huge blockbuster to someone like David Lynch? Hell yeah. I want films as goofily ambitious and bugfuck crazy as Dune to be made every year.

 

Also if it weren't for Dune, De Laurentiis wouldn't have bankrolled Blue Velvet as a consolation prize.

Did a rewatch recently after reading Children Of Dune. When you know who these characters are and why they're important, it makes some scenes much more interesting.

 

Not that it wasn't interesting before, there is a reason I've watched it 7 or 8 times over the years. Fascinating is an understatement. This is a balls out awesome world on film, filled with iconic moments and visuals. Certain parts should've been executed better (I've never liked the way the final night time assault looked), and the edit needed some tweaks, but I defy any director today to do better with the same amount of screentime.

 

Thank Christ we didn't get a Peter Berg version of this. I'll bet it would've been goddamn Taylor Kitsch as Paul.

 

The most interesting point of comparison between Hollywood of today and early 80s is the franchise mentality. There were critical bits of info that were edited out of Dune that would've been needed  to set up a Dune Messiah/Children Of Dune film. Paul's marriage to the Emperor's daughter is the big one (there are a few tiny bits referring to it in the deleted scenes on the 2005 Dune DVD), and setting up Duncan Idaho's ressurection. A big budget release today would never toss those aside. 

 

Edit: And there is one key line in Frank Herbert's (mostly positive) essay about the film: "Paul was a man playing  god, not a god who could make it rain.". I don't really care that Lynch played it as a rousing triumphant ending, it works in the movie. I'm all for filmmaker's taking license with source material where they need to so that the movie functions as it's own thing. It's just interesting how it plays against the events of the next two books, with Paul denouncing himself as a messiah and wandering into the desert to die. The first Dune is the only one with the "hero's journey" that plays so well in big budget blockbusters.

 

How would they handle it today, with the franchise in mind? Who knows. I hope I never find out how Peter Berg or the Taken guy would.

Edited by Kyle Reese - 4/14/12 at 12:27pm